


Tim, on the street

by always_a_birthday_girl



Series: nighthawks(looking for baggage that goes with mine) [1]
Category: DC Animated Universe, DCU, Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Everyone Is Cold, M/M, Sad with a Happy Ending, Swearing, also dick, lots of swearing, wally and artemis are mentioned but not by name
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2016-02-13
Packaged: 2018-05-20 01:57:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5988187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/always_a_birthday_girl/pseuds/always_a_birthday_girl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>cassie’s got those stars in her eyes, and roy’s left for the atmosphere, and tim is wondering what it would be like to live outside of the crash and the high and the burn but it’s too cold, too cold to think about that now so he ducks down to that cute barista and gets a lot more than he thought he would once upon a december</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tim, on the street

It’s kind of like . . . that really crappy movie about HIV, where everyone sings and then the transgendered guy dies. It’s like that, but without the music. Or the HIV. It’s just this guy dying, dying because it’s fucking cold and he was fucking high and this is life, not some movie based on a musical based on an opera.

  
Tim Drake sees the police take the body away. No one steps up to claim it--who the hell has the money for a funeral? Let the state cremate him. He sees the body loaded into the back of the van, the disgusted and horrified faces of the officers, and, beyond that, the guy’s girlfriend. She slinks back into the alley before the cops notice her, her slim face drawn, high cheekbones turning her hollow cheeks into a skeleton’s mask.

  
Tim’s older brother fucks her sometimes. It’s just something that happens. Tim wonders if she’ll be around tonight, or if she’ll be off riding through her grief in a trip through rainbow clouds. Who knows. People mourn in different ways.

  
He follows the girlfriend’s example, and disappears.

 

* * *

 

There’s this building that Tim sleeps in, along with a girl named Cassie and a boy-man-teenager named Roy and a kid named Bart who puts on glittery eyeshadow and pole dances at the gay bar around the corner. Roy’s fucking scary, a dealer, and Cassie comes across as the sweet girl who ran away from home and will wuss out and go back any day now until you see her judo throw a gangbanger into the nearest brick wall and realize she’s the girl you want to be friends with, rather than enemies. And Bart’s just Bart. He keeps to himself, like Tim. Oh, he talks, sure. He’ll talk anyone’s ear off. But he never has much to say.

  
A few buildings down is a coffee shop.

  
There shouldn’t be a coffee shop in this part of town; this part of town is all warehouses and condemned apartments and a whole lot of abandoned everything where squatters live and nobody else. But there is one, and you can buy one size, black, in a Styrofoam cup for ninety-nine cents, and also crusty bread and blueberry muffins. Three things; that’s the whole menu.

  
The shop does enough business that it stays open, even though none of the people that Tim hangs around with have money. There are some around here who are poor, but not absolute poor, and others who come from the nicer parts of town that aren’t the snobby parts of town because they appreciate having a cup of coffee at a decent price, not a Starbucks price.

 

So there’s a coffee shop, and Tim messes around outside it sometimes like everyone else who’s noticed that there isn’t a No Loitering sign hung on the door, and he goes inside every once and a great while when it’s extremely cold and the owner will give him free coffee and a wink. The owner’s too nice to be running a coffee shop in the slummiest part of an already slummy city.

  
It’s cold today, and Tim ducks inside the shop with bills rustling in his pocket. Today’s a good day, even if that guy--the boyfriend of the girl that Tim’s brother likes to fuck--turned up dead.

  
Today, Tim woke up almost stone cold sober, and went for nearly five hours without getting a craving, and he dug his warped old guitar out from under the pile of junk that was his and Cassie’s and Bart’s possessions(what little they were)and made a few bucks crooning to other people’s girlfriends and boyfriends. He isn’t so good with being good, but he knows to pay forward when he’s been blessed, so he’s decided to take all of the money he’s earned and buy a cup of coffee, a hunk of bread, and a blueberry muffin. Whatever’s left over, he’ll put in the tip jar.

  
After he orders, he sits at one of the four tables inside the coffee shop and pretends he doesn’t notice the wrinkled nose of the one other patron. Yup, he smells. There’s no running water where he lives. He pisses out the window and into the alley every morning. He hasn’t showered in months, and the last time he had even a sponge bath was a couple of weeks ago in the bathroom of the gas station, and that was because he’d messed up and gotten some guy’s cum in his hair. There’s no one around to impress, so he rarely bothers.

  
The bread is hot, and good, and he scarfs it down within seconds so that he’s not as hungry when he gets to the muffin. He can take his time with that, eating it piece by sugar-sprinkled piece, and he grins happily to himself.

  
Nice things happen in small doses; in muffins and heat and tiny coffee shop tables. Nice things are the rough wood of a guitar under the pads of his dry fingers, and Cassie’s laugh when something strikes her fancy--nice things are just that. Nice.

  
Tim doesn’t mind how fucked he is, because it means that nice has more value for him. He could bet anything that he’s enjoying this coffee, this muffin, more than any other overworked businessman stopping at a Dunkin Donuts on his way to the office. He’s getting more satisfaction out of ninety-nine cents worth of caffeine and hot water than any stressed soccer mom or cramming college student; and for him, that’s better than anything else in the world.

* * *

 

There’s one barista who works there, the owner’s son. Tim sees the guy every now and again as he drifts by the shop. The boy’s eyes are blue, like Tim’s, and his hair is black, but the resemblance ends there. He’s square-jawed and broad-shouldered, like the superhero in an action comic, and his smile is honest, not shady or sarcastic or weary. His name tag reads Conner.

  
Just for shits and giggles, Tim drags him out to the dumpsters behind the shop and blows him.

  
It’s kind of a fuck you to the jock class, who he perceives this Conner to be a part of, but it’s also kind of a thank you to the coffee shop owner, for being so kind all of the time. And Conner blushes and stammers and eventually moans, and Tim smiles in satisfaction because this is basically what he does. It’s what he’s good at. And he figures that will be the end of it, but it isn’t because after that the boy gets all fucking flustered when they meet and then he does the worst thing ever. He starts asking questions.

  
He asks if Tim is eating okay.

  
He asks if it’s cold outside.

  
He asks about Tim’s friends, and what he does when he’s not at the coffee shop(which is an amount of time that is rapidly getting smaller), and about the drugs.

  
He never asks about that bit outright, though--just vaguely, circularly, tactfully. He knows that Tim’s using. Anyone who sees those shaking hands, those bright eyes, can tell.  
Anyway, Tim doesn’t want anyone being all concerned with him and he certainly doesn’t want some guy getting all clingy with him just because of a one-off in an alley next to a Dumpster, which is the most cliche and grungy way to give a blowjob, so he starts to avoid the shop because he doesn’t have the money to spend on so much fucking coffee and excuses to be around. It’s easier to shoot up and snort and let four months pass by without seeing stupid Conner.

* * *

  
It’s stupid Conner who finds him, when he’s making like the boyfriend of the girl that his brother is now openly fucking, shivering and possibly dying in that building he lives in with Cassie and Roy and Bart only Bart moved out to live with his boyfriend down on Fifth and Cassie’s been gone for days

(maybe that gangbanger finally hit back. Or maybe she finally went home)

and Roy is in and out and in and out and only still when he’s fucking with Tim, which is next to never these days, or maybe it’s quite frequently and Tim just doesn’t remember because he’s so out of it and the bottom line is, he wakes up in a hospital bed with Conner sitting in the chair next to him.

  
And then Conner just takes him home.

  
It’s like that movie, the stupid one with music and HIV and the girl who almost dies in the end but fights through, and there’s sort of a happy ending in that no one is dead except the transgendered guy (which kind of blows for the other guy, the straight-lace who really loved him). And, okay, none of that is actually in Tim’s life except the part where he isn’t dead.

  
And Conner takes him home.

  
Happy ending, or something.


End file.
